Background
With-profits endowment policies were aggressively sold for many years, including during the 1980s, by insurance companies. The policies were marketed as an almost guaranteed way to pay off a mortgage and leave the policy holder with a lump sum once it had matured.
The with profits endowment policy was sold alongside an interest only mortgage. By only paying interest, mortgage repayments were kept low. The endowment policy also had monthly premiums to pay which ran for the term of the mortgage. The policy would rise in value as premiums were paid and through profits from investments, paying off the mortgage when the policy matured.
However, many policies did not increase to the level that was required.
Read more about this topic: Endowment Selling
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)